140 National Geographic Magazine. 
At Upper Kamchatka there are seventeen and at Lower Kam- 
chatka fifty houses, at another place | Middle Kamchatka] where 
there is a church are fifteen houses, and in all these settlements 
there are not over 150 Russian subjects, who live by the collec- 
tion of the yassak [tribute money |, beside those who were brought - 
to the country on our expedition. 
In coming over to Bolsheretsk we brought 300 puds of whale 
blubber obtained from a whale cast up by the sea, which served 
us as money, together with the Circassian tobacco which is here 
commonly so used. 
In the southern part of Kamchatka live Kuriles, in the northern 
part Kamchadales, whose language is peculiarly their own with 
but few introduced words. Of these people some are idolaters, 
others believe in nothing and are strangers to all honesty. The 
Russians who live in Kamchatka and the indigenes grow no grain 
and have no domestic animals except draught dogs. ‘They dress 
and subsist upon what they can get, principally fish, roots and 
berries, in summer time wild fowl and large marine animals. At 
present in the wilderness of Yakutsk, the convent, which is of the 
same age as the Kamchatka churches, cultivates barley, hemp and 
turnips. Here only turnips are grown by the people of the three 
settlements, but they grow very large, in Russia they are smaller, 
here there may be four turnips to a pud. I brought with me on 
my journey some rye which was sowed around the establishments 
near us, but whether it ripened or not I did not ascertain. The 
frost strikes early into the ground in this region and the absence 
of cattle renders it difficult for the people to plow. 
The natives described and from whom the yassak [tribute] is 
collected, belong to the Russian Empire and are all savages. 
They are known for their dirt and bad passions, If a woman or 
any animal brings forth twins then one of them is smothered, the 
hour it is born, and it is regarded as a great fault if one does not 
smother one of the two. 
The Kamchadales are very superstitious. If there is any one 
who is very ill, even a father or mother, or near the point of 
death, they will carry them out into the woods and leave them 
without nourishment for a week together whether it be winter or 
summer, from which treatment many die. The dead are not coy- 
ered with earth but are dragged out and left to be eaten by dogs. 
The house of a man who has died is abandoned. Among the 
Kariak people it is the custom to burn the body,.although this is 
forbidden. 
